Waiting Room

 I've noticed something about waiting. 

We wait a lot. We wait for our coffee. We wait for Friday's. We wait for the light to turn green, for the packages to arrive, for people to finally text us back. And in all of this somewhere along the way, waiting has stopped being something we did... and became somewhere we lived.

Maybe, that's what our late teens are... a very glamorous waiting room.

Everyone keeps asking what comes next as if adulthood is hiding behind a curtain, waiting for someone to just call your name. They ask us about careers, colleges, relationships, apartments, five-year plans. And somehow, you're supposed to answer like you've already read about the last chapter.

Meanwhile, I'm just trying to remember where I misplaced my charger. 

It's funny how much time we actually spend chasing the next version of ourselves the one who has it all together, the dream closet, dream job, dream apartment, the dream skin. As if one day we'll wake up and finally feel like we arrived.  

But what is " arriving" is really just another place we keep moving farther away from?

I've started to think that life isn't made up of the milestones we circle on the calendar. Maybe it's the really the moments in between the laughs that you didn't expect, the playlist you accidentally left on repeat, the random Tuesday that becomes one of your favorite memories without warnings.  

Maybe we're so busy waiting for the big moments that we end up missing the small ones that quietly introduce themselves. 

And maybe growing up isn't about finally having all of the answers. Maybe it's about getting comfortable with better questions. 

Because if life is just one long waiting room.... 

Are we all just waiting for our lives to begin, or have they been calling our names the whole time?